‘Call the teacher what?’ said Cath.
But Lucinda kept smiling, and shook her head, whispering to herself. Cath crouched down to hear what she was whispering.
‘Ms Murphy,’ she was whispering.
‘You’re not allowed to call me Ms Murphy?’ said Cath.
Lucinda nodded and her ponytail bounced.
‘But Lucinda, that’s my name!’
‘I can’t say Mzzz,’ explained Lucinda, and then shook her head wildly as if she had walked through a spider web. ‘Don’t make me say that sound! I can’t say any word with that sound! That zzz . . .’ She gasped, and shook her head again.
Luckily, at that moment, the girl beside Lucinda said: ‘Vagina, vagina, vagina’.
What was that child’s name? Her name tag was on the floor.
‘CASSIE SAID VAGINA!’ shouted Marcus Ellison.
Cassie. That’s right. Cassie had been five minutes late for school that morning and her mother had written an apology note, which was polite of her. In return, thought Cath sternly, I should remember her daughter’s name!
But, to be fair, Cassie’s name tag was rarely on display because she made dramatic speeches, waving her arms for emphasis and sweeping pencils and name tags to the floor.
‘Vagina, vagina, vagina,’ declared Cassie.
‘That’s enough, Cassie,’ Cath said, firmly.
Cassie looked up in surprise. ‘But I have to say it five hundred times!’
‘Who said you have to?’
‘I did.’
‘Well then, tell yourself you don’t have to.’
‘Okay.’ She nodded, and went back to her pompom.
On Friday, Cath sat on a wooden bench, waiting for Warren Woodford. They were going to have a Grade 2 Curriculum Meeting, but Cath had playground duty. So they would have it outside in the sun. She was swinging her knees to play her secret game in which she imagined she could lever herself up into the sky. She’d had a skiing accident as a teenager, and they used metal joints to reconstruct her knees. Since then, she had thought of her knees as a magic-levering-hoist.
As she levered, she called ‘Hey there!’ crossly, to a boy who dumped a salad sandwich in the bin, ‘Ho there!’ sternly, to a girl who pinched another girl’s nose, and ‘Hey now’ lovingly, to a boy who approached to show a grazed elbow. Once she had dealt with the elbow, she leaned back to get the big picture (mainly games of elastics today and loud conversations about a new computer pet called Mr Valerio, which you fed by remote control), and to think.
It’s great being single! is what she thought. But something was bothering her, and she stopped swinging her knees to confront what it was.
That’s what it was. The one thing she liked about having a boyfriend: the relaxed atmosphere when you meet a new boy. In conversations with boys who might become friends, Cath liked to joke around a bit, maybe even flirt, but she had found that boys grew wary, and found a way to mention my girlfriend. This left Cath feeling irritated, put in her place, and wanting to explain: I’m not making a move, I’m just making friends.
It was much better when she had a boyfriend herself, so she could respond with my boyfriend, to redress the imbalance and get on with it. Or even better, say my boyfriend first.
‘White, no sugar, yes?’
Warren Woodford’s voice was behind her, and when she turned around, it was not just his voice, it was him. His left arm was pinning a bundle of folders awkwardly to his side, and his right hand stretched to hold two mugs of coffee, long fingers looped around the handles. He was staring ferociously at the coffee mugs, as if that would keep them from spilling.
He has noticed how I take my coffee! Or maybe that’s how people take their coffee, as a rule.
She helped him to sort out the papers and mugs, then he straddled the bench, and now it was strange, because she was facing forward, while he was looking at her shoulder. Like a set-up for a photo shoot. Or like he was riding a horse the regular way, and she was riding it side-saddle. His nose was quite long, and his mouth was a bit big for his chin.
‘I hear you’re studying law?’ he said, as if he didn’t care that his mouth was too big for his chin.
He has heard things about me!
‘Not yet,’ Cath explained. ‘I only just enrolled. The classes start next week.’
‘Huh.’ He nodded to himself, as if this was just as he’d imagined. ‘Why would you do that? Study law, I mean?’
‘Something to do.’ Cath shrugged.
‘Something to do,’ he repeated slowly. And then, in a chant: ‘Something to do; someone to sue; somewhere to queue. Hmm. Queue. Forgive me.’
He put down the mug and said, ‘This is terrible coffee. And another thing, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to work with the Principal here. What’s his name? Billson. He seems a bit, I don’t know, slow?’
‘I think,’ said Cath, ‘that he is brilliant.’
‘Well, brilliant, yes, of course. Frank Billson, eh? A remarkable man.’ He took a thoughtful sip from his coffee: ‘And this is excellent coffee.’
So far, in five days of school, and three brief chats on the 2nd grade balcony, Warren had not said my girlfriend once. Cath appreciated that. Either Warren did not have a girlfriend, or he did not see the need to mention her. Either way, it was respectful of him.
Cath liked being single, but she wanted to make friends with this man, this Warren Wishful Woodford. (His eyes had a wistful, wishful look.) She wanted to make friends and to do that, she might have to flirt.
FANCY ZING
The telephone rang like a rooster that was learning how to crow.
It was Grandma. She was on the walk-around phone. ‘Why, it’s my Cassie! How’s my Cassie?’
She was fine.
‘And how was your first day of second grade today? Was it exciting?’
A bit.
‘And who will be your friends, do you think? Still friends with that nice little boy with the funny crooked leg? What was his name? Joey? Kaminsky? Kaminska?’
No, not really. Not since first grade.
‘And what about your new teacher, Cassie? Miss Murphy! Was she nice? Was she nice to you today, sweetheart?’
Uh-huh.
‘And were you nice to her?’
Uh-huh.
‘And were the other children nice to her too?’
A bit.
‘Well now, Cassie, can I talk to your mummy? Is she around?’
Uh-huh.
Cassie took Grandma down the hall, nestled in her arm like a soft baby duckling, and into her mother’s study. Her mother wasn’t there. She put the phone on the spare bed and sat at her mum’s desk, to read some words from the computer screen.
Then she remembered, collected Grandma, and flew her down the hall like a kite without a string. Grandma got bumped against the wall once, and then Cassie saw her mum at the kitchen sink, and said: ‘Grandma’s on the phone.’
‘All right,’ said her mum, peeling off her washing-up gloves. ‘Just put her over there for me.’
Cassie put Grandma down, gently, alongside the teapot and a saucepan lid.
Picking up the phone from the kitchen bench, Cassie’s mother, Fancy Zing, announced: ‘Today, Mum, the sky was very blue.’
At which her mother cried, ‘Yes! Wasn’t it? A beautiful first day of term! Cassie seems excited about second grade, doesn’t she? I can’t wait to hear more! I bet you had trouble getting her up this morning. She likes her sleep, that Cassie, doesn’t she? Listen, as madcap as it sounds, I’m thinking of making a strawberry risotto for dinner.’
They discussed the merits of strawberry risotto, but Fancy found herself drifting to a day at the seaside, years before, when she had scolded a pair of seagulls. The seagulls were stretching their necks to bully one another. ‘You stop that!’ she scolded. ‘You be nice to each other.’ Curiously, the birds had glanced up at her, startled but also repentant, and she had longed to gather them into her arms and say, ‘I’m so sorry for sho
uting, darlings, but you really mustn’t fight.’
‘And then,’ said her mother, ‘there’s beef stroganoff. It’s a good old stand-by, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ Fancy agreed, ‘but I’d better go now, Mum – I think Radcliffe’s at the door.’
Radcliffe was Fancy’s husband and just that moment he had called from the front porch: ‘Fancy that! My Fancy is at home!’ This was his standard greeting from the porch, before he even opened the front door.
‘I’m in my study!’ called Fancy, and she hurried down the hall from the kitchen to her study, and sat down at her desk. She took a notebook from the drawer, and at the top of the page, she wrote:
Irritating Things About My Husband.
Then she used a ruler to draw a box.
Her husband leaned through the study door and said, ‘Mwah!’ which was his way of kissing her hello.
‘Hello!’ she replied, ruling boxes furiously. She realised he was still standing there, leaning against the doorframe, and she looked up at him. ‘Hello,’ she said again, and tapped the side of her glasses. He nodded calmly, and wandered off down the hallway, calling, ‘What have you done with Cassie?’
Fancy ignored him, and began to write inside the first box.
On Tuesday morning, Fancy dropped Cassie at school and came back to the smug, empty house. She sighed as she wandered its hallways. Its hallway, she corrected herself. There was only the one.
Then she changed back into her pyjamas and sat at her desk with a cup of tea and honey-on-a-crumpet. She was planning to write a prize-winning novel, and she thought she might write it in italics. Italics, she thought, had both gumption and mystique. Also, a particular italicised sentence was floating around in her mind these days:
How is your ocean bream, my love?
She was not sure what she meant by this sentence, but found it very moving. It would presumably be spoken in a restaurant.
On Wednesday evening, Fancy and Radcliffe were watching TV when Cassie walked in, damp-haired from the bath, in her summer nightie.
‘Here’s trouble!’ This was what Radcliffe said whenever Cassie walked into the room. Or even if Cassie had just gone to the bathroom at a restaurant and was coming back to the table. ‘Here’s trouble!’
Cassie always looked worried when he said it, a bit suspicious, which Radcliffe had not noticed. Fancy wondered when he would. She regarded her husband carefully now, and then drifted back to his marriage proposal.
The marriage proposal had taken place several years before: she was now thirty-four; back then she had been only twenty-one. It was while they were walking a muddy trail outside Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. The mud was as black as shoe polish, and Fancy’s head was filled with vaguely ominous yet sensual thoughts.
Radcliffe seemed to be concentrating on photography. He did not have a camera with him, but he kept backing up carefully from wild flowers or muddy twigs, squaring his thumbs and index fingers, squinting through the square and saying, ‘Click!’
After one such photograph, he dropped his hands to his side, abruptly, and announced in an ordinary voice: ‘I would like to marry you, Fancy.’
‘Would you?’ Fancy was surprised, even doubtful.
‘I would like to marry you,’ he confirmed. ‘And everything about you.’
I would like to marry you, and everything about you.
Fancy drifted back to her own living room, and picked up the remote control to zip through the ads. They were watching a taped episode of Law & Order. But she realised as she zipped that the show was over. She had missed the end and was zipping into a whole new program. Radcliffe and Cassie sat quietly, pretending that nothing odd was happening.
‘Well!’ said Fancy, pressing STOP on the remote.
‘No!’ cried Cassie, frantically. ‘Don’t say “well!” like that! I don’t like it when you say it that way!’
‘How would you like me to say it?’ asked Fancy, mildly. ‘Well? Well? Well!!’ She tried out different pronunciations. ‘You choose, Cass.’
‘I don’t want you to say it at all,’ explained Cassie. ‘It means you want me to go to bed.’
‘Oh ho!’ Radcliffe swivelled around on his bottom. He was sitting on the floor cross-legged. ‘Casso-tobacco suffers from clinophobia, does she?’
‘What?’
Radcliffe grinned at his daughter.
‘Clinophobia,’ whispered Cassie, staring. Then she turned to her mother and explained: ‘Just say it in a way that doesn’t sound so happy, okay?’
‘All right, darling, say goodnight to your father.’
‘My little clinophobic!’ Radcliffe gave Cassie a hug.
‘It’s a fear of going to bed,’ Radcliffe confided later, leaning into Fancy’s study.
‘I’m trying to work, Radcliffe,’ Fancy said coldly.
Fancy was a writer of erotic fiction. Of course, she was also planning to write a prize-winning novel: erotic fiction was her butter knife; the novel would be her tomahawk.
At fourteen, she had worked part-time in a hardware store and she still remembered fondly the counting down of change.
‘Twenty dollars? Thanks. So, that’s eleven, that’s thirteen, that’s fifteen, and that’s twenty. Would you like a bag with that?’
No thanks, the men always said. But sometimes she gave them no choice, putting their screwdrivers straight into plastic bags. They never used the handles when she did that, grabbing the bag around the neck as if it were a hen.
On Thursday morning, Fancy felt that there could be nothing wrong with driving your daughter to school in your pyjamas. Also, nothing wrong with driving your daughter to school and quickly jumping out of the car on the way home to dump two garbage bags of second-hand clothes into the St Vincent de Paul blue bin. Nothing wrong with that at all!
Except that the man next door was having breakfast on his front porch as she emerged in her pyjamas, shouting: ‘CASSIE! GET A MOVE ON! WE ARE VERY VERY LATE,’ and spilling worn-out clothes from two garbage bags hopelessly clutched under her arms.
He was one of those dull Canadians, the man next door, the kind who speak slowly and with a polite, mild amusement about everything.
‘Got your hands full there,’ he declared from his porch, with his knife and fork poised over his bacon, and that little smirk of his. Their houses were very close.
‘Yes!’ Fancy agreed, and then she had to pause, for the sake of politeness, before shouting at Cassie again.
The neighbour returned to his bacon and pancakes – bacon and pancakes! – and Cassie emerged from the hallway with a comb and scrunchie hanging from her mouth, the car-keys looped around her finger, her hair falling into her face, dragging an enormous garbage bag behind her.
‘What on earth are you – Cassie, darling, that’s the bag of books! We’re not bringing that one.’
Cassie took the comb and scrunchie from her mouth. ‘Why not?’
‘Darling, we’re giving that one to the school fete, not to St Vincent de Paul. But thank you, that must have been very heavy on the stairs.’
Cassie raised her eyebrows and turned to drag the bag back inside.
‘No!’ Fancy panicked. ‘Just leave it by the door there. No need to take it back upstairs.’
‘Okay.’
‘Have you got your lunch?’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s peanut butter. On the second shelf of the fridge; run back in and get it, quick.’
‘Peanut butter!’ shouted Cassie, and stamped her foot. She had loved peanut butter yesterday, but sometimes her taste took an unexpected swerve.
‘In Newfoundland,’ said the Canadian from his porch, ‘the kids swap lobster sandwiches for peanut butter.’
Cassie stared at him.
‘Gosh!’ Fancy said, politely.
‘That’s how common lobster is,’ confirmed the Canadian, ‘in Newfoundland.’
‘Cassie,’ Fancy said after an agonising pause for politeness, ‘quick, honey, go and get your l
unch.’
The news was already starting its triumphant drumbeat as they pulled into the bus zone at Cassie’s school. ‘Vagina, vagina, vagina,’ said Cassie, counting on her fingers. ‘Uh-oh.’ She pointed at the radio. ‘The news is on.’
‘Here –’ Fancy craned into the rear-view mirror, and brushed Cassie’s hair behind her ears. ‘Pass me the pen from the glove box. I think I’d better write you a note.’
Dear Ms Murphy,
Please excuse my daughter, Cassie Zing-Mereweather (better known as Cassie Zing – her choice!), for being late today.
I had to take some second-hand clothes to St Vincent de Paul.
Yours sincerely and VERY best wishes!
Fancy Zing
On Friday night, Radcliffe and Fancy drove to a Zing Family Secret Meeting. Cassie was in the back seat with her first week of 2nd grade piled all around her.
‘They are going to be amazed about this, aren’t they, Mum?’
Cassie leaned forward in her middle seatbelt and waved a butterfly painting around in front of them, blocking Radcliffe’s view of the road for a moment.
‘They sure are!’ agreed Fancy.
‘For Christ’s sakes!’ snapped Radcliffe, at the same time.
This threw Cassie back into her seatbelt for a moment. Then she recovered. ‘First I’m going to show my Mentals book with the gold star, next I’m going to show my pompom, then my painting and then – no, wait –’
‘We must be just about due to have the Samsons and Bellamys for dinner, eh?’ Radcliffe said to Fancy, tapping on the steering wheel. He had the habit of talking over Cassie when he found her boring.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘But Cassie’s birthday’s coming up soon.’
I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes Page 2